


although only breath

by karennninas



Series: diner au [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6880651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karennninas/pseuds/karennninas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're both sixteen years old, sitting under the bleachers on the football field, and hidden from view. They contemplate life and death and biology homework. </p><p>They're both nineteen years old, sitting across from each other at an old diner table. They contemplate life and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	although only breath

**Author's Note:**

> giant shoutout to @iluzjonista (@angischuyler on tumblr) for beta-ing this and making it readable
> 
> -warning throughout the entire fic for references to domestic abuse and idk if it's a trigger but just in case - a major theme throughout the fic is emotional dependency  
> -warning for this particular chapter for depictions of self-harm, but it won't ever come again in such detail

People were concerned, at first. Some people were even worried.  _ They’re far too young _ , people had whispered,  _ those teenage marriages never work out _ . And, in the case of the Reynolds, this turned out to be horrifically true. 

In the years that followed the marriage of the two (James had been 19, Maria had been 17), people saw Maria less and less. Once in awhile, someone would run into her at the grocery store-- that was it. The ones who had once worried gradually forgot their earlier concerns. Maria Lewis ( _ Reynolds _ ) was a lost cause.

**

Schuylers’ Diner was a damn  _ staple _ in their town. It was tiny-- there were maybe four booths and a cramped countertop-- but the food was amazing and the owners (who doubled as waitresses and cooks) were the friendliest people you could meet. Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy Schuyler-- they were sisters, and all three of them lived in the apartment above the diner (the “apartment” consisted mostly of pillow forts and mini fridges all plugged into one extension cord; they were on a budget). 

Wherever the Schuylers were (so, their diner), Alex Hamilton,Jack Laurens, Marc Lafayette, and Hercules Mulligan weren’t ever very far away. He practically lived at one of the tables; he spent so much time in the diner (every time one of the sisters tried to kick him out, he’d order literal  _ platters _ of chili fries, and then spend three hours trying to actually eat them.)

**

Jack Laurens burst into the diner, immediately filling the space with his conspicuous energy. “Yo, Liz!” he called, half-jogging to the kitchen door and cracking it open, only to be knocked in the forehead by its edge when Angelica forcefully opened it from the other direction, balancing two hot plates of pancakes on her arms. 

“How many times do I have to tell you: t _ he kitchen is employees only _ ,” she said sternly, handing the pancakes to Martha Manning and Abby Adams, who were chatting at the counter, stirring coffees. “Eliza’s out with your boyfriend.”

“James Reynolds is  _ dead,” _ Jack told her, apparently not registering her strict reminder.

“He’s  _ what _ ? Dead? You better not be messing around, Jack.”

“Shot himself while his wife was out at the drugstore, at something like five this morning. She was screaming when she found him-- the entire complex must’ve heard her.  _ I _ did.”

Angelica sat down blindly at the booth next to them, and Jack sat across from her. “That poor girl,” she said softly. That poor girl who was exactly the same age as Angie’s baby sister, who was in the same class, who shared dozens of mutual friends, till the end. 

_ The end _ being when she dropped out of school, shortly following her marriage to James.

That was something that Angie shared with her other sister, Eliza: a constant fear and concern for Peggy, the youngest. The whole town, a tight-knit group, the type where people checked up on each other, gossiped heartily, and cared for each other too, had been shaken (secretly, of course, because everyone was afraid to think about what might happen to the girl and her new husband-- James Reynolds, who’d never been good to her while they were  _ dating _ ), and Angelica had been in the middle of final exams at Northwestern. She’d come home to find that that her sisters had changed, ever so slightly. 

Eliza had become gentler, kinder. She was softer with Peggy; she didn’t get as frustrated with her little sister as she used to. Angie had known from the get-go, as soon as she got home, that the kindness was only crippling fear for the girl she still saw as just a baby. It was kindness that would eventually overcome her, like a sickness (except sweeter), and embed itself into her personality. 

Call it a sisterly concern-- only, instead of a concern, it’s an overpowering fear without any basis. Peggy barely had anything in common with Maria, whose name was just short of taboo. They were the same age. They were both children.

Peggy had done the opposite-- she’d somehow become less reserved. She seemed to shut out everything around her; she smiled and danced and learned how to cook for the diner, and that was that. She, more-so than the rest of the town, forgot whatever horrors she might’ve suspected, and she flourished in the blissful ignorance. Call it guilt. 

“S’not like she’ll be too cut up about it, once the shock wears off. Everyone--” Jack lowered his voice to a comforting whisper-- “everyone could hear what went on in that apartment, Ange. Not exactly something to grieve over.” 

“That poor girl,” Angelica repeated. “She’s Peggy’s age. I remember when she stopped showing up to school-- Christ Almighty, that poor girl. You know where she is, now? Not at the apartment?”

“Nah, she’s been at the police station ever since-- they’re prolly tryin’a see if  _ she _ did it, you know?” 

“Did she?” The very prospect was terrifying. 

“Fuck no, Ange-- I saw her, after. I ran down when she screamed-- not like there hasn’t been screaming coming from  _ that _ fucking apartment before, but she kept screaming, so I figured it was something  _ real _ bad. She was a mess, but not in the  _ I-just-shot-my-husband _ kinda way,” Jack explained. 

Angie’s face was still in her hands. “That poor girl. You think she has  _ anyone _ , now?”

“I heard Tasha saying that she’d let Maria stay in a room at the hotel for free, if she asked. Ange-- listen, Ange-- nobody likes what she’s gone through. People that tried to stop it-- there was never enough  _ proof _ to get police or anything-- and there isn’t anyone who wouldn’t help her out, now, alright?” 

The bell on the door at the front of the diner jingled. 

“Ange! You don’t happen to have, like, a shit ton of chili fries just sitting around, right?” Alex’s arm was slung around Eliza, who was cracking up at something he’d said while they’d walked over. 

Jack’s head shot up from backrest of the booth. “Yo, Liz, get over here! You’ll never guess--”

“James Reynolds ‘kicked the bucket’? We know. The whole complex is a crime scene, now,” 

Eliza interrupted, her voice retaining its usual gentle softness. “Anyone know where his new widow is?”

 

Eliza was one of the very few who’d kept a constant concern for the town’s Lost Cause over the years; the fact that Maria was Peggy’s age, that something like that could happen to her, scared her to death.

“Police station,” Angie supplied, momentarily lifting her face from her hands. 

 

“Did she shoot him?” Alex asked, quieter, raising his eyebrows. 

“ _ No _ ,” Martha and Abby, who’d been apparently listening to the whole conversation, said in perfect unison. 

 

Alex and Eliza squished onto Jack’s seat. “Does Peggy know?” Alex asked earnestly. “She used to go to school with her, right? Before all-- all that shit went down, they knew each other, right?”

“I don’t think they were too close,” Eliza said softly, drowned out by Angie’s loud mumble:

“She’s probably already heard. She’s back in the kitchen, if you wanna check.”

Alex turned back to Eliza (his arm still slung around her, but now the gesture was less playful, more intimate). “I saw them together a few times, way-back-when, hanging out. S’why I asked,” he said gently. 

She nodded. “You’re sweet,” she assured him. 

“Hey, Margarita!” Jack called to the kitchen door, startling Angie out of whatever haze she’d been in. 

 

The haze, of course, was the brief terror that Eliza had felt so many years ago: the idea of relation; the  _ what if it had been Peggy _ ? It was a ridiculous notion, but it’s one that haunts all sisters and mothers and brothers when a tragedy strikes, or something completely unpredictable happens to a completely predictable place. 

 

**

 

Alex had noticed when Eliza lost her edge. He’d known what had caused it, and he’d known not to ask. He’d noticed when she didn’t yell back when they fought, when she didn’t scold Peggy for coming home late. She’d adopted a gentle grace that was not hers before. 

 

Ironically, it was the spontaneous softness that had driven them apart, for a full three months. Her kindness upon discovering that he cheated, sparked an anger in every other person involved (ie, Jack). The last time she ever  _ screamed _ at Alex was when she was kicking him out.

 

That was the longest split they’d ever gone through. Others, before that, only lasted days, or sometimes a week or two.

 

**

 

The police were nice-- it was like they knew everything, they knew what James had done, they knew that Maria hadn’t hurt him. She recognised one officer who’d knocked on the apartment door a few months back-- she’d thought, for a moment then, that James would have to leave then and there. Not a minute later, James had been apologizing for turning the television up so loud and shutting the door behind the officer. 

 

The police let her go and gave her directions to a hotel in town. The officer -- Burr-- nodded respectfully and wished her well upon seeing her again. Two officers at the desk by the precinct door asked if she wanted someone to get her stuff from the apartment. She didn’t. They pressed, to see if she was sure. She was. 

 

Tasha, the hotel owner, told her she didn’t have to pay for the room, that it was no problem, and didn’t ask questions. She gave her a foldable tourist map, circled the diner, mall, and convenience store in loopy red pen.

The diner was odd-- everyone got a little quiet when she walked in. She’d expected that-- she wasn’t fucking  _ dumb _ . She knew that people had already started to whisper, feed each other bits and pieces of what they had heard from so-and-so down the street. It’s just-- as much as she’d been prepared for this moment, it still felt uncomfortable. 

 

She made her way to the booth at the back left corner of the diner, right by the kitchen door, where it was a little dark. She felt eyes on her even as she walked across the aisle, and finally, she turned to look back at them. There was a couple-- a guy and a girl-- that she didn’t know, a few girls sitting at the counter, and a group of guys all packed onto one seat in a booth. 

“You wanna mind your own business?” she spat, and she sat at her booth with her back to the diner. 

 

_ (he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead--) _

Eliza Schuyler carefully walked up to her with a notepad. “You want something to eat?” she asked lightly. 

Maria shook her head. “You, um... could you grab me a kids’ menu?”

 

_ (he’s gone it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay--) _

“I could just tell you what’s on it, if you want--”

“No, not to order-- I’ll have some tea, please-- could I just have one? A kids’ menu?” Maria twisted her fingers together. 

 

_ (gone gone gone gone gone gone gone gone--) _

Eliza nodded, seeming to understand. “Sure. I’ll get one. You want crayons?”

Maria nodded. 

 

_ (if he’s gone, who’s that voice in your head--) _

 

**

“She’s been sitting there, coloring, for  _ hours _ , Ange,” Eliza whispered, glancing out the kitchen window at Maria. “She hasn’t even  _ touched  _ the tea.” Two out of the three sisters (Peggy was over at the stove with her back to them) were gathered around the little round window on the door, carefully positioned so not to be noticed by any diners. 

“Maybe we should ask if she wants something else,” Angie suggested. “She needs to eat. Look how  _ tiny _ she is. You’d think--”

“I know. Her husband-- late husband-- wasn’t exactly  _ nice _ ,” Eliza murmured, not wanting to hear the words  _ you’d think he controlled what she ate _ . She glanced out the window again. Maria was still coloring the little pre-printed pictures (of penguins wearing hats, lions on a hill, snakes in a jungle, all from an exceptionally primary-colored zoo) on the menu. 

“I’ve got this,” Peggy said, pushing past the both of them with a little bread plate in her hands. She opened the door and sat down across from Maria. 

“Hey, Mary.” 

“Please don’t call me that.” Maria didn’t look up. “The only people who ever called me that were…” she stopped herself, froze, and waited for Peggy to respond. Maria knew exactly what was about to happen. She’d find Maria not warm enough for a proper conversation, and trot back off to the counter and finish gossiping, just like the rest of them.

“Hey, Maria,” Peggy amended cautiously. “Okay,  _ look _ .” 

 

Maria obeyed, tilting her head back in the girl’s direction, tried not to remember what they’d once been. Peggy’s eyes flicked briefly down to the floor then back at Maria; her pleading brown eyes were wide, and she’d dared her lips into a ghost of a smile. Complete sincerity. Maria hadn’t seen that in a  _ long _ while.

“I got eight sweet potato fries here.” She pushed the little bread plate to Maria. “I don’t really have anything to bargain with, but eat them before Angie has a stroke or something. Please?” The smile grew, less grim in its shape; her expression was that of someone talking to a child.

“I’m not hungry.” She broke eye contact with Peggy and looked back down at her menu, digging her bitten fingernails into the edge of the table.

“I bet you haven’t had much to eat today. Would you rather go back to your hotel and make something for yourself?” Peggy’s smile melted a little and she raised her eyebrows with the question she  _ knew _ would elicit a negative response. It didn’t take a genius to know that Maria had cooked every meal she’d eaten for the past two and a half years.

Maria froze. “I’ll eat your fucking fries,” she mumbled, resumed coloring. 

“I’m gonna sit here till you do, okay?”

Maria nodded. 

“You gotta take a bite, you know,” Peggy said, her voice still firm.

Maria stared hard at the crayon in her hand, clenching her jaw and pursing her lips. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” she forced out, didn’t really know why she was telling her this but the words pressed insistently at her throat, begging for release. She glanced up at Peggy, whose expression was, once again, softening into something gentler-- she didn’t want to say  _ pitying _ , but that’s what it was. “I don’t know what to feel.” The words were choppy, unsure. She had to talk herself into each and every syllable.

“I think that’s normal,” Peggy said softly. “It’s normal to be conflicted when this kinda shit happens. You... you were hurt.”

“He used to hit me.  _ Used _ to.” She put down the crayon, twisting her fingers together and pressing her lips into what could’ve been either a smile or a grimace. Context was key. “Then, I learned. Don’t  complain, and he won’t hit you.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Do what he says-- go grocery shopping when no one else is awake, make dinner, be polite-- and he won’t hit you. Never complain,” she explained, starting to nod to an imaginary pace. “I don’t miss him,” she added importantly. “Couldn’t.”

“I believe you. You have a place you’re staying, right?” Peggy asked, trying to subtly change the subject and nudging the bread plate of fries toward Maria. She heard Eliza gagging over the trash can in the kitchen and kept eye contact with Maria to ignore it. 

“I don’t know why I ever married him. I can’t-- I remember loving him, but I don’t think he was ever  _ nice _ .” Maria looked up at Peggy pleadingly and reluctantly took a fry, hoping to assuage the concern and fear twisting on Peggy’s features-- the look was so familiar, it was one she once knew inside and out, and it was then that she’d known how to make it disappear. “In the end, he’d just hit me if I cried. I didn’t cry much, but if I  _ did _ , I mean.  _ I’m trying to make this nice for you-- _ ” she faltered for a moment-- “ _ You retard. This is how you repay me? _ ” she quoted, assuming a deeper voice and scrunching up her eyebrows. The concern on the other girl’s face was forgotten; she was surrounded by her own goddamn thoughts. “He said he was trying to make it nice for me, but I don’t think he gave a  _ shit _ . I knew that he didn’t care how it felt for me from the first time we had sex, but I stayed with him. Why did I stay? Why would I  _ fucking stay _ ?”

 

“You were a baby,” Peggy said, her voice soft but her expression sour at the thought. “You were a baby, and he took advantage of you and he hurt you and he trapped you, and no one should be allowed to do that. He-- he deserved to die.” That was crossing a line, perhaps a few dozen, and she knew it, but it needed to be said.

“He didn’t,” Maria said, her voice freezing up again. “No one deserves to die. Even if-- they  _ hur _ t people like that-- he couldn’t deserve to  _ die _ , and that’s an awful thing to say. And this isn’t fucking Stockholm Syndrome or anything; I just wanna respect who took his own life.”

“Because he couldn’t live with how terrible he was to you,” Peggy added earnestly. Her eyebrows creased and she pressed her lips together, trying to retract from the air what she’d just said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’d really like to sit alone now, Peggy.”

 

**

Alex lay on the long red couch in the apartment next to Eliza, who was lying upside-down on the opposite end so their faces were next to each other. Angelica and Peggy were working downstairs. “I want you to know,” he began, his voice sounding strange and shaky, “I’ll never do that.”

“What?” she asked, bringing her hand up to touch his cheek, brushing her fingers over his lips. Their relationship had become more romantic over the past two years, more loving-- daresay,  _ healthier _ . 

“From what I’ve gathered over the years, James wasn’t always bad. There’s a reason she married him, you know? He was loving and shit, right? She didn’t realize until it was too late, till they were married and he was-- he was doing shit, right? The only warning signs were when he yelled sometimes and I can’t stop thinking about--  I won’t-- I couldn’t do that. I need you to know-- I’ll never turn bad,” he said. The shakiness in his voice was something she’d rarely heard-- fear. Pleading fear and desperation. “I-- I swear.”

“I never thought you would. Never,” she promised. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” she added for emphasis. 

“You were afraid, though--my second summer back from college, when you found--” the scars, he was going to say  _ the scars _ \-- “and I can’t stand the thought of you being  _ afraid  _ of me. I wasn’t good back then. I need you to know  _ this-- _ ” he gestured to the door, to Maria, who was sitting downstairs in the diner mourning a violently abusive husband-- “will never happen.” 

Eliza reached above her head, pulled his arm to her by his hand, and kissed his wrist. The white scars stretched up and down, a few even by the underside of his elbow. There were probably more than a hundred, it’d been well-used for years, but there were four that stood out the most. They’d gone deep; they were the ones he’d made when he’d  _ really _ wanted to die. They were the ones that gave Angelica a funny expression whenever she saw them because, when she saw them, she saw Peggy retching at the bottom of the stairs and the blood pooling into Eliza’s lap. “I’ll never be afraid of you. Not when you got these--” she pressed lightly on the four big scars-- “not when-- before.” She was talking about before he got the medication, when he would yell sometimes over nothing. “I wasn’t afraid of you then; I was afraid  _ for  _ you. Because you’re important to me, and I hate seeing you hurt. I’ve never been afraid of you. You’re not James Reynolds, and you’re proving it again right now, okay?” 

(Eliza had screamed. She’d never seen so much blood; she grew up in that tiny fucking town-- things like this  _ didn’t  _ happen here, and she clasped hands over her mouth, screamed. See, she hadn’t registered Alex at first; she was afraid someone’d been hurt or there had been an accident with scissors or any other number of things. She would have never expected this -- she would never have expected him to  _ hurt _ himself.

 

And sure, Alex had some issues. Like when he’d get so worked up about something-- anything-- that he’d talk so fast that no one could understand him-- and other times, he’d go entire days without saying more than three words. He had his good swings and he had his bad swings, that’s what he called it.

 

She’d grabbed the razor before even thinking about it, and she’d taken three towels against his arm and she’d held him, barely able to register what was happening.

Angelica had come sprinting upstairs, Peggy right on her tail. She’d run in to see Eliza standing in front of the bathroom, clutching Alex, her light blue shirt matted with blood. There was just  _ so much blood. _

Eliza had told Angelica, between gasps of air that couldn’t be characterised as sobs, to call 911. Peggy was hyperventilating, slowly backing toward the doorway to bolt downstairs into the kitchen. They heard her retching before she reached the bottom of the staircase.

Eliza had called Jack in the middle of the night upon remembering that he was still in Charleston, that he still didn’t even know. 

Alex told Jack that sometimes he wanted to die so badly that he couldn’t think about anything else, but other times, he couldn’t even remember what it was like to feel suicidal. Jack told the nurse, the nurse told one of the doctors, and that doctor had committed Alex to the psych ward for “a two to three week period”. 

Sixteen days later, he’d been diagnosed with Bipolar I and given prescriptions for an antidepressant and an antipsychotic, along with another four-week commitment to the psych ward.)

“I love you. A lot.” Saying the words quieted down the screaming he always heard when she touched those four scars-- he never did tell her about that, and the meds seemed to help, anyways-- ( _ call 911, Angie, please _ ), and pressed his forehead to hers. 

“I love you a lot, too.”

 

**

Maria finished the fries after sitting with them for five and a half hours. Peggy never sat back down, but she hovered near her just to keep an eye. 

She approached Peggy, who was wiping down the counter. “I don’t have money,” she said bluntly, handing over the little plate. “You can write it down somewhere, though, and I’ll pay you back. When I have, like, a  _ job _ .” She tried for a self-deprecating laugh. It didn’t work.

Peggy shook her head, not looking up. “On the house, Maria. Go get some sleep.” She didn’t have the same concern in her voice as she’d had earlier; it was less personal. 

“I’m sorry for snapping, earlier,” Maria said numbly, the earlier politeness vanished.

“Nah; that’s you. I  _ know _ you, remember? You’ve been through hell; you deserve a break,” Peggy smiled, referencing Maria’s marriage with a surprising lack of caution. “Come back tomorrow and I’ll make you some discount pancakes.  _ Severe  _ discount. Deal?”

“Deal.” 

Maria left, and Peggy finally flipped the closed sign. She walked through the diner to the door leading up the stairs to the apartment and banged on it with both fists. “No one’s having sex up there, right?” (There were some things that a nineteen-year-old couldn’t un-see.) After being answered by a chorus of  _ no _ ’s with one challenging  _ yes _ from Alex (she could practically _ hear  _ his grin), she climbed the stairs and threw her apron on the floor. 

 

The apartment was pretty nice, considering its miniscule size. It had three bedrooms (one of which  _ literally _ used to be a closet), and the kitchen, living room, and dining room were all condensed into what little space was left. 

 

The kitchen area had a microwave and two mini fridges stacked on top of each other (“for efficiency”), along with a little counter that was mostly covered in old magazines (70 percent of which were an American Girl Doll magazine subscription that was yet to be claimed by a resident of the apartment). 

 

The living room doubled as a dining room, and it consisted of a long red couch and two armchairs strategically positioned around a box-shaped television from 2005 for maximum viewing capacity. Fifty percent of the couch cushions were on the floor due to a recent pillow fort’s building and subsequent crashing down. 

 

Angelica and Eliza had the actual bedrooms. Angelica’s was fairly neat, only since she could compensate with a bigger closet. Eliza’s room was slightly more nightmarish, but she blamed most of the mess on Alex, who practically lived with them. Peggy’s room first existed as a closet, and thus was the cleanest -- it was required, to keep standing room. She had a little twin-sized mattress without a frame and some nice paper lanterns. She’d added a nightstand-and-lamp, salvaged from Ikea clearance, so it actually looked pretty nice.

“How’s Maria?” Angie asked from the big yellow armchair.

“Okay, actually. She’s coming back for breakfast tomorrow,” Peggy paused in the TV area. “Scoot the fuck over,” she demanded of Alex and Jack, who were sitting on the couch with Eliza. They did as told. 

“You guys went to school together, right? You’re the only one she seems to listen to, now,” Alex commented, absently twirling Eliza’s hair. “I saw you near the football field together a couple times.”

“The hell were  _ you _ doing near a football field, Alex?” Jack asked, and the subject of Maria was forgotten.

Alex scoffed. “I could be athletic,” he said matter-of-factly.

“You could be  _ mathletic _ ,” Jack corrected. “And we don’t think any less of you for it.”

 

“I do,” Peggy said informatively, shifting positions to (affectionately) lean on Alex’s shoulder and hang her legs off the armrest. 

“No, it’s okay. I play baseball, Peggy played softball, Ange gets her exercise from yelling at me--”

“Also jogging,” Angelica added with a yawn from her armchair. 

“--Eliza did, like, yoga for a year and a half, and you play... whatever smart people play--  _ chess! _ You play chess,” Jack grinned contently; nevermind that Alex had never played chess a day in his life. 

“I’m not even that  _ good _ at math,” Alex grumbled.

“This is a great conversation, but I’m going to bed.” Peggy rolled off of the couch and walked to her room. “And keep it the fuck down so I can sleep!” she called from behind her door. 

 

**

Maria came in for breakfast as promised. She ate two thirds of the pancake Peggy gave her with some syrup, and screamed when Marc Lafayette dropped a mug on the floor. After that, she said she wasn’t hungry and asked Eliza for some crayons and a kids’ menu. 

Angie was talking (flirting, probably) with Martha (in a committed relationship with Abby Adams for the better part of two years, anyways) over on the other side of the counter, Peggy was in the kitchen making pancakes and omelets, and Alex was sitting on the kitchen counter (“ _ That’s a food safety hazard, motherfucker _ .”) drinking coffee with chocolate milk instead of cream (it saves the time of adding sugar, apparently).

“She eat anything yet?” he asked, referring to Maria, as Peggy flipped an omelet two feet in the air and caught it with a nonchalance similar to the one in his tone.

“Little bit of a pancake, earlier. I might bring out another with, like, whipped cream or something. She’s so goddamn tiny,” Peggy sighed, leaning against the counter. “Maybe she’ll eat if she isn’t in front of everyone? I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s tough-- but I think there’s, like, triggers. Loud noises and shit. Like yours, but less random.”

 

(Elephants, empty syringes, the color bright orange, and thunder.)

“You could have her eat back here. That would draw attention or something, though, right? And she wouldn’t want to.” Alex stared into his homemade, lukewarm mocha. “Can I decorate the pancake for her? And then all the rest of the pancakes?” He hopped off the counter and went to the fridge to get the whipped cream. 

“If you draw dicks out of chocolate chips again, I’m gonna tell Eliza to make you sleep on the couch,” Peggy said, pointing her spatula at him with a threatening glare. 

 

“You underestimate my maturity,” Alex scoffed, shaking his whipped cream can. “Completely unrelated: can I squirt this into my mouth?” 

 

He grinned; she wouldn’t let him get on her nerves and he knew it. Their relationship was playful-- like annoyed siblings. 

 

(And when they were joking and bantering, he could forget how she’d thrown up in the hospital room, unable to look at his newly bandaged arms because she couldn’t unsee the sticky, deep red that they’d once been and the way--)

“Take a goddamn nap, Alexander.” She sighed. “Pancake’s over here. Put, like, a heart on it. Something nice. Not a face, though. Faces are creepy.” 

Eliza came down the steps from the apartment, tying her apron around her waist as she walked. “Al, would you get me some coffee?” she asked, kissing his mouth as she walked by. “Morning, Peggy. Thanks for letting me sleep in.” 

“No problem. I like opening, anyhow,” Peggy said, turning to face her sister as she stirred more pancake batter. “People do the weirdest shit when they’re deliriously tired at 5:45 in the morning. Charlie sang  _ Singing in the Rain _ for fifteen minutes straight while I made his egg-white omelet.” 

“He does that anyways,” Alex pointed out from his pancake decorating station. “Here. No dicks. Just a flower.” He walked over and handed the little plate to Peggy. The pancake was surrounded by high towers of whipped cream and topped with a little flower made of chocolate chips. 

“It’s beautiful.” Peggy had traded her wry, annoyed smile for a genuine one. 

“It takes you fifteen minutes to make an omelet?” Eliza asked, still on the subject of Charlie Adams, taking the bowl of batter from her sister. 

“I like to make it pretty. Garnishes and everything--  Alex, you done with your coffee? Then  _ work _ . She isn’t dating superhuman-genius-guy for the looks; trust me. Do the dishes.” Peggy enunciated with the pancake plate and nodded toward the sink, already half-full of dishes.

She opened the door with her hip to see Maria, still sitting at her booth, coloring. Martha Manning was sitting at the counter, mindlessly shoveling corn flakes into her mouth. Jack Laurens and Marc Lafayette were at a table near the window, drinking coffee and laughing about something. 

“Hey, Maria!” 

Maria looked up. “What is it?” she asked with a vague amount of concern. 

“I brought you a pancake. Specially decorated by my sister’s boyfriend -- he’s smart, or something, apparently, which makes everything he does  _ especially _ special.” Peggy explained as she set the plate in front of Maria. The other girl didn’t react, and Peggy sighed. “I’ll kick Lafayette out if you want; you gotta eat something,” she pleaded. 

“Your sister’s boyfriend -- he’s the genius one, right? I remember him.” Maria poked at the pancake with her knife. “With the long hair? Not  _ long _ , but. With the weird nose? He was always nice to me.” 

“That’d make you one of the few,” Peggy said lightly, sitting down across from Maria with ease. “I shouldn’t say that. You and him, you have something in common.” She paused, carefully choosing her words. “He--  _ you _ love to love.”

 

Maria raised her eyebrows in surprise; that was the one idea she’d never expected. Not with her present situation, anyways. “Do I?”

 

“You love to love and you love to hate. Anything in between is… hard to deal with.It’s very either/or with the two of you. You get it?”

 

“Yeah.” Maria brushed off whatever red flags within her mental health that might’ve appeared in the comparison and continued. “ And, I’ll eat. It’s okay, you can go back to doing your job, and stuff. You don’t need’a watch me.” She ducked her head in and smiled as Peggy stood up, like the insinuation that she knew of the sisters’ worry for her made some kind of inside joke. “If your sister’s boyfriend shows up, tell him I wanna say hi.”

“No problem. Eat your food,” Peggy said, walking behind the counter and refilling Martha’s coffee before heading back to the kitchen. 

 

Martha had evidently been recovering from another one of her infamous fights with Abby -- the last one had been over kids, the one before that was about closet-sharing, and so on and so forth. While she was usually bright and bubbly in the mornings, Martha was tired and quiet. Her curly hair was half-heartedly knotted at the back of her head and she wore pajama pants and a t-shirt instead of the usual colorful and classy skirt and top, complete with intricate jewelry and corresponding bindi. 

 

Martha had really picked up the chocolate-milk-coffee thing from Alex, and her post-fight morning “cocktail” (she had Peggy pour some Monster into the coffee pot) was at least 40 percent chocolate. The combination of emotion plus caffeine and sugar made her into what could only be described as a lovesick, melting robot. 

 

“When you find love,” she was saying to Peggy as the latter made a new pot of Monster-chocolate-coffee, “You never forget… never lose how it feels, you know?”

 

“I know, Martha,” Peggy assured her before going back into the kitchen. “Alex, you aren’t doing anything particularly important right now, right?”

“Well, you just told me to work, so I--”

“Come say hi to Maria. She wants to say hi to you,” Peggy said earnestly. 

“How does she even remember me?” Alex asked, putting down his whipped cream cans and chocolate chips, clearly about to head towards the door. 

“She certainly seems to. I’ll take over ‘decorating’,” Peggy assured him, making obvious quote-marks with her fingers. She walked to Alex’s station, carefully set up between Eliza and the employee coffee pot. 

 

**

 

“Hi, Maria,” Alex said, sitting across from her at the booth. “H-how’s it going?” He nearly cringed at the awkwardness of his tone. 

“Do you remember what you said to me? Back in school-- or,  _ I  _ was in school; you weren’t-- before I got married. It was a little bit before the wedding, and I guess you must’a seen me when you were getting Peggy.” Maria was half-finished with the pancake he’d decorated for her, and she was poking holes into the melty whipped cream with her fork, barely looking up at him. 

“I-- I’m sorry, I don’t. What did I say? It’ll probably come right back to me,” Alex amended, completely undisturbed by her jumping straight into the conversation. He tried to make eye contact. 

“You told me that to have real love is to sacrifice your everything without wanting a thing in return, and that James wouldn’t do that. You said that he’d want me to, but he wouldn’t himself. I didn’t believe you, and I thought you were being awfully forward-- and too philosophical-- so I yelled at you. I guess i should say sorry for that. I guess I should’a listened.” She tried to smile, after a moment of trying to read his expression-- his expression, which obviously showed that he knew what he’d said. “Although, to be fair, there was a lot of reason not to take relationship advice from  _ you _ at the time.”

Alex smiled, almost fondly, at oh-so-cherished memories of his once-crumbling love life. “I didn’t say that. Albert Camus said it. So, technically, you refused advice from a dead French philosopher.” His smile dropped a fraction of a millimeter. “But I get your point. No reason to take advice from, ah… from me.”

Maria’s face twisted a little. “You knew about me and Peggy, right?” The subject change brought Alex’s train of thought to a complete halt. 

“What about Peggy and you?” (He knew). 

“Don’t play dumb.” She un-scrunched her face as she figured out the wording of what she’d say next. “You saw us, back when we were… freshman? Sophomores, probably. I figured I should tell you, since you seem to be some odd part of her family, that that’s why she cares so much about me, now.” A pause for a deep breath and a cloudy smile . “ _ She _ broke up with  _ me _ , and she feels kinda guilty, I guess. If she hadn’t broken up with me, I wouldn’t’ve gone to James… shit would be different.” She smashed the last little tower of whipped cream with her fork. “I’d have gone to college, gotten out of this  _ motherfucking town _ , I… I’m sorry. You went to college, right? And you’re still here.” 

“I sure am,” Alex said, quiet and disconnected as an echo while still managing to sound assuring. 

“Sorry. That could’ve been taken the wrong way. I’m sorry.” She bit her lip and they sat in silence for a few seconds. “The-- you decorated my pancake, right? With the heart, and the chocolate? It’s nice,” she finally said, forcing a semi-genuine grateful smile. She’d changed the subject as fast as she had before; a skill acquired by many an emotional abuse victim. “I think I’ll die before I ever eat my own goddamned cooking again. So, thanks.” The more she thought about her own cooking, the more grateful she felt-- the more genuine her expression. It felt good not to be lying, for once.

“No problem,” Alex said, still sounding soft and assuring. It was the default tone for talking to her, Maria realized.  _ Don’t get too close, make sure she feels safe _ was the mantra of anyone who stepped too near to her.

“I haven’t eaten good pancakes in forever,” she said, trying to laugh a little (if there was one thing she remembered, it was that you can’t leave Alex Hamilton with too much time to think, or else he’ll end up figuring out every goddamn secret you have). “Are you still dating Eliza? Or Jack, whoever it was you were dating. There was a lot of drama.”

“Eliza and I are…” The past two years’ worth of fights and reconciliations flashed through his mind. “Still together. We’re happy.” 

 

The conversation continued until Eliza asked Alex to take over with the pancake-making so she could wait tables and Peggy could take a break. 

 

Maria was left alone with her half-pancake and melted whipped cream, wondering about everything Alex had said. She thought-- no, she  _ knew _ \-- that he’d seen her and Peggy, because she remembered making eye contact with him and feeling her heart stop. Had it really been so long that he couldn’t remember? Or had it been so long that she built up what had been a tiny exchange between two sixteen-year-olds and a nineteen-year-old into some giant, life-changing event? 

 

It seemed more probable that the significance existed entirely in her head.

 

A wry voice in the back of her mind let out a whisper for the first time since James’s death:  _ what isn’t, nowadays? _

**Author's Note:**

> another shoutout to my beta @iluzjonista bc shes the reason it was even coherent like ten rounds of applause for her please
> 
> disclaimer - im still learning out 2 use ao3 so pls forgive any weirdly-spaced paragraph breaks etc
> 
> kudos/comments/reviews are a good night's sleep during exam week <3


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